Page 47 of Teach a Rogue New Tricks
“A difficult several months to be sure. There’s also Iranian.” She lifted the other hand to add to her tally. “Italian, Latin, Spanish, Russian… and soon Persian, I hope.”
“You’re a wonder.” He meant it.
She shrugged. “As I said, I cannot speak them.”
“I don’t understand how that’s possible.”
“When I’m reading, I can figure out what the words stand for. I just don’t know how to pronounce them. I can speak a bit of French because of a governess I once had, but that’s it.”
“Ha!That’s it.Will you show me?”
“If you’d like, on our next outing, I can bring one of my books. I might need my father’s help with the Persian. I could be working at it a while.”
“Does it come easy?”
“No, not at all.”
“Then why do you like to do it?”
“I suppose… it’s something that’s all mine. When I’m translating a book I’m to be left alone. That means there’s no Pansy or Nicholas or Thomas chattering in my ear. I’m using my mind to solve a problem that is unrelated to squabbles about who pushed who first or whether or not to let Nora lengthen her skirts before father sends his approval.”
“You were a mother to your siblings.”
“I tried to be. They didn’t have one. They only had me.”
“And you had?”
“My books. My father sent them quite often from wherever he traveled.”
Cass felt several almost overwhelming urges at once. First, to storm into Hopkins Bookshop and buy Ada every single book in a foreign language housed within its walls. Second, to beat her father over the head with something blunt and heavy for leaving such responsibility to his daughter. Third, to pull her close and whisper, “You have me, too” into the swirl of her ear. The third was inadvisable, the second, impossible, and the first required planning.
Planning? Planning ofwhat? How to give himself to her? In a carnal way or a… another way entirely?
Goddamn, he’d asked for a governess, not a w—
“Are you well?” Ada laid a hand on his arm. “You look as if you might cast up your accounts.”
He shrugged away from her touch and scooted his ass across the wet grass, planting distance between them he hoped to grow into an impenetrable forest. “Oh, look! Here comes our ice.”
A man carrying three glass cups walked toward them from the direction of the tea shop. He stopped above them and held out the ices.
Cass stood and took them, and the man bolted back toward the tea shop.
“Thank you,” Ada called to his retreating back.
Cass returned to his soggy perch, set his own ice aside, and held out the remaining two. “Sweet or savory?”
“Sweet.” A dimple appeared in her cheek. A damneddarlingdimple.
Unfair, that. Why should a woman he could not touch, could never have, own such a mischievous little dent? And so close to pink plump lips that tasted sweet.
He ignored the dimple, though it winked at him as her lips stretched in and out of mirth, and handed her the sweet, then set the savory aside.
“You should say thank you,” she admonished. “To the man who brought the ices.” She dug a spoon in and lifted it to her lips. She took a small bite and closed her eyes with a sigh. “Delicious.” As her mouth worked the ice, the dimple appeared and disappeared, a flickering star guiding a lost man home.
Cass gulped. Why had that forest not grown? He scooted farther away. Could be pointless. With that star of a dimple, he’d find his way through the deep-woods tangle and to her side in no time. “Tell me what else I should do. Lecture me.” Anything to douse the growing desire. No. Desire, pure and simple lust, he could manage. He needed to douse the softness growing up his insides, like verdant moss, covering every inch of him.
He’d taken the forest metaphor too far, but he felt a green boy, as new to the emotions rocking him as he was to tending vegetables. Vegetables, forest, Cass—all green. An overused metaphor, but apt.
